Ben & Jerry’s makes ice cream-powered ice cream; world peace next

More green points for the hippie-tacular dessert outfit Ben & Jerry’s: A factory in Hellendoorn, Holland, is now successfully using the waste products of its ice cream-making process to make more ice cream. A huge biodigester, affectionately known as “the Chunkinator,” combines excess milk, syrup, wastewater, and bits of fruit with billions of microbes. The microbes eat the sweet and creamy leftovers and convert them to biogas, cutting down on the facility’s heat and energy costs.

Chunkinator construction and testing started in 2010 and now the energy-saving process is in full swing, with a reported 16 million pints of ice cream created in the past year — all thanks to the byproducts of their predecessors. So far, the factory has been able to use all of the wastewater it produces and about half of its waste ice cream.